A Background Review Of The Tempe United Church Of Christ

By Elizabeth Edwards


The Temple United Church has its roots based in the Protestant Christian Denomination. Over the years, tempe United Church of Christ has established over five thousand churches across the world and has taken in several millions of congregants. This denomination has a great emphasis on the interfaith efforts among other issues such as human rights.

The unity was as a result of two protestant churches coming together. This has combined two groups of people with the same faith. Due to the combination in place it has gained more followers than ever before. It is also expected to gain popularity among many believers in the near future. Apart from that the institution is now working with non believers to change their view of religion.

Each of the constituent churches is allowed its own form of worship, as that body has not restricted them to a certain way. Despite all that, there are some shared beliefs across all the different churches such as the belief on the need for evangelism. In addition, the churches share a similar belief in getting to know how the old literature in the Bible has a direct relation with the occurrences in our day to day living.

Aside from the Bible, the other form of literature in the denomination offers freedom in all walks and thinking of congregants. The body recognizes Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior as that lead within the whole organization. On top of that it agrees that there are two forms of sacraments, The Communion and Baptism and also acknowledges the presence of the Holy Spirit.

One belief that the body holds quite close is the need to be in unity and offer a unifying factor across the world. For this reason, it has involved itself in an organization that aims at uniting other nine protestant denominations across America. It has also been part of a global council that aims at creating common theological views across the different churches.

The most recent unison was with the United temple of Canada and it was aimed at creating similar ways of participating together in missions, ministry and worship. In the unison, the two denominations could take similar sacraments and be preached to by all the ministers within the unit. In addition, Muslims and Jewish communities have been included in several agreements by the body.

The local temple or what is mostly referred to as that congregation is the basic unit of whole denomination. All the local churches are allowed their own forms of governance as they are allowed to come up with their individual governing structures. As a result, the ways of governance vary across the churches, in that some have one central council and others have different boards.

The body has famed itself with how greatly it has offered the freedom of worship among its local people based on the set covenants. Despite this, it has faced criticisms due to its stand on issues such as theological differences, political views and social matters. For example, its acknowledgement of same sex marriage was greatly defied, and they ended up losing some members. In addition some of allowance for campaigns within the congregation by certain politicians in America.




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